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Thursday, 13 February 2014

Historical PACC 2014 contest evaluation

It took some time before I could write this blogpost, lack of time as usual, there is a life besides the hobby! Historical? Absolutely, I think it was a very interesting PACC which we will remember for a long time. The fact that stations from the BES Islands (Bonaire, St.Eustatius, Saba) did try to make a point in the contest was good for a lot of discussion. Those stations did not give progressive numbers but CN (Caribian Netherlands) instead. This because their opinion is that the BES islands should take part in the PACC as Dutch provinces which they are actually. With the French contests as example were french territories can take part in the French contests like they are part of France. Of course they applied a proposal to the VERON, but the VERON voted democratically "No". So things did not happen. I'm sure everyone will remember this for a long time and so this PACC was historical. It means the BES island stations are not valid for points or mulitpliers this time. But in fact that counts same for everyone so it will not affect scores at the end much. I did work PJ4NX Peter on 4 bands and indeed got CN as Dutch province. I don't really care, I'm not really a very serious contester and like working new DXCCs a lot more. Besides that I didn't have PJ4 on 80m yet so it is a new band DXCC for me. I worked a lot of other stations that will be rejected by the logrobot that's for sure. I also discovered I worked a lot of dupes, probabely because my call was spot as PA4BAS and of course a lot did copy that without thought in their logs although I repeated a lot that the call was spotted wrong.

I started the contest on 10m and first QSO was with Peter PJ4NX. A hour later I did get a lot of trouble with RFI into the headset, I only got bad reports. I did take too much time to find the solution for the problem and I was behind the schedule from the PACC 2012/13 already. Around 20:30 local time I figured out it would be wise to do 80m as many people watch the 8 O'clock TV news and then do some radio. I was right and had a pile-up for about 2 hours with a rate of 89 stations/hour average. It gives you the ultimate kick and that's what I like in contesting. I was immediatly out of trouble and ahead of my previous PACC scores. I used the sheep fence from our neighbours as extra counterpoise for 160m, I don't know if it helped but I made a lot of nice contacts into Europe on that band. Things got worse around 3 UTC and there was no DX at all. I had a second screen this year on with a DXCluster on it so I could jump to new multipliers if I wish, same effect as a second radio. But even on the clusters there were very limited spots at that night time. I decided to sleep for a hour and was back at 4:15 UTC. Most QSOs were made on 80m and 40m, that's were my antenna is best and that's were you got most of the stations at the PACC. At 11:00 UTC I broke my score of last year and thought the contest was over, then I realized I had another hour to go. I used it to score extra mulipliers. In the end and after correction I came to a score of 682 QSOs and 133 multipliers. I worked 51 DXCC in this contest. 6 band contacts were: PA6NH, PB7Z and PE3V, 5 band contacts: KC1XX, PI4H, PI4FRG, PA0AA and PI4DX. I really improved this year and historical I beat all the previous PACC scores. It will not be good for a first place as you need at least 800 QSOs and 160 multipliers for it these days. But I guess I placed myself at the first 10 at least hopefully. Not bad for a modest amateur radiostation.Most interesting DXCC:10m: CO6LC (Cuba), FT5ZM (Amsterdam Isl.), E20WXA/M (Thailand), WP3UX (Puerto Rico), PJ4NX (Bonaire), PY1SX (Brazil), S9TF (Sao Tome&Principe), KC1XX (USA)15m: HK3JJH (Colombia), JA3AOP (Japan), PJ4NX (Bonaire), KC1XX (USA)20m: DP1POL (Antarctica), PJ4NX (Bonaire), VK2GWK (Australia), KC1XX (USA)40m: WP4UX (Puerto Rico), YY2CAR (Venezuela), KC1XX (USA)80m: NP4A (Puerto Rico), PJ4NX (Bonaire), VE9ML (Canada), KC1XX (USA)